


Shadow Through the Leaves

by Orlha



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Depression, Gen, Sakumo as Hokage, Sakumo-centric, Suicide Attempt, What-If, Where Kakashi is presumed to be stillborn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2019-12-18 09:31:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18247109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orlha/pseuds/Orlha
Summary: What if Kakashi's mum died while giving birth to Kakashi when Sakumo was out on a mission? And Sakumo is told that the baby was a stillborn. Meanwhile Kakashi was taken by Danzo and given to Orochimaru as one of his lab experiments and Orochimaru didn't know baby Kakashi was Sakumo's child.And everything changes.Sakumo-centric.





	1. Chapter 1

Sakumo’s back late from the mission. The house is silent and cold and that is when Sakumo knows something is wrong. He doesn’t wait to ask his neighbours. His gut churns.

Tsukimi must have gone into labour. The doctor had said that an early birth by a few weeks is possible especially for clan babies. 

Sakumo had wanted to be here for the birth, not just because it is his first son, but because of the possibility of complications. 

He dashes across the rooftops, ignoring the grime and blood on his vest. A shinobi’s instinct is never wrong and Sakumo wants it to be wrong this time. Sage, please let Tsukimi be alright.

He bursts into the emergency room, the doors slamming shut behind him, leaving mud prints behind as he stalks towards the receptionist desk. “Hatake Tsukimi, may I-”

“Sakumo.”

He turns at the voice. Hayato’s grim face only strikes the nail further in. Hayato’s the next best medic Tsukimi could have aside from Tsunade and, sage, please please _please._

“Sakumo,” Hayato says gently, cupping his elbow and steering him down the corridors. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

_We._

Tsukimi and his son? Sakumo wants to hope.

Hayato leads him further down into the hospital, so far down that even the smell of disinfectant and illness tapers off, leaving only the stench of death and push open a door. Sakumo takes a step in and sees a body on a metal cart.

Tsukimi lying there, all cleaned up and in her arms is a cloth wrapped bundle.

Lying there in the morgue.

His heart skips, his legs would have given out had it not been for his rigorous shinobi training and Hayato’s hand on his bicep. 

He hadn’t wanted her to risk it. He told her it was too dangerous, told the Hokage that he _had_ to be there. 

Sakumo drops to the ground, a roaring sound filling his ears as he tried to make sense of it all. Tsukimi couldn’t be dead, she promised.

“She promised,” Sakumo laughs mirthlessly. What was the clan house for now? All the time he spent fixing up the garden.

He looks up, sees the frown on Hayato’s face. Then lets Hayato knock him into blissful darkness.

✥.✥.✥

“Another unwanted baby?” Orochimaru mutters as Danzo hands him the bundle. 

A newborn too, he notes, running through a basic medical check up. Newborns are ugly and usually fairly useless until their chakra system develops. This one, however…

“Where did you say you get this from?” he asks Danzo. 

“The baby chute. Why?” 

Because this one has beginnings of a chakra system, quite possibly a clan baby. Orochimaru doesn’t say it though. Clan babies are better for experiments that Hokage assigned him, more malleable. “Just curious.”

He jots down some notes on the newborn and decides it’ll be called Four because it has white hair.

Maybe this time the Hashirama gene might splich better?

✥ ✥ ✥

“Hatake Sakumo, there’s an emergency mission that _needs_ to be completed.” Sandaime’s face is grave. 

Sakumo doesn’t need additional cues that the mission is highly risky and he can’t find it in himself to care. He’s been running red missions, one after another, just waiting for one to take him down. Apparently the joke’s on him. Twenty-three missions later and he’s still alive. 

He takes it and briefs his teammates. They’re good shinobis, not even protesting when their Hokage has essentially told them to die for the village and that their deaths would be beneficial. 

Four goes, and the Shinigami still doesn’t even have the decency of appearing for him even when only him returns.

Kumo takes the fall and the Third Shinobi War starts in Konoha’s favour. Sakumo is labelled a hero.

But his house is still silent and cold. The garden, that Tsukimi wanted, is overrun now. The unused baby room along with the tiny baby shoes that she made on the cupboard is an ever reminder of things he can never have.

He’s tired.

He was going to name his son, Kakashi. If his son was alive now, he would be six, going to academy, bringing friends over. He would be teaching him the Hatake katas, teaching him the ropes of being a kenjutsu specialist.

If Tsukimi was alive now…

Sakumo whips his tanto out. His chakra flares up at his command, channeling into the blade. He slashes the cupboard, rips the shoes apart, hacks at the bed until it is all splinters.

“Why didn’t you take me too?”

His hands flash seals faster than his mind could process. A surge of chakra roars up his throat and out his mouth in a ball of fire. The clothes catches on fire and so do the shoji. Rapidly engulfing the house, enclosing him in. It would be a simple leap for Sakumo to escape. 

Should be, at least.

Except, Sakumo lies there, in the middle of the burning room. The flames lick him and he closes his eyes, imagining Tsukimi’s silky dark hair, her thin lips twisted in her usual smirk and tell him that she’s waiting for him. He would come up with a lame excuse on why he’s late and she-

“SAKUMO-SENSEI!”

The flames surge upwards as one of the windows is smashed open. Two arms grab him, dragging him across the burning room and out into the garden. 

“Sakumo-sensei!” His blond genin sobs. 

“I got Mikoto-chan!” Kushina yells and an Uchiha approaches him, running a green lit hand over him.

“Sakumo-sensei!” 

Sakumo sighs, blinking his eyes open. He turns. The fire is still ongoing, reaching up into the night sky. By dawn, there would nothing left of the clan house that he fought with his father to get. 

And he would still be alive.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The Inuzukas tell a story, passed from child to child of their sister clan. Of the Hatakes who were more wolf than man, more chakra than flesh. Of how a wolf god was tricked into being stuck in the body of a farmer, the anger and rage that he embodied became the first Hatake shinobi. The Inuzuka children are reminded that if there is anyone they should never anger, it would be the Hatakes for their retribution would be immeasurable. 

Tsume never quite believed it. All clans had their bogeyman, the Inuzuka were no different. Hatake Sakumo was a handsome man. There's very few things hard to like about him - that toothy grin, the tight ass, the overpowering Alpha aura. As the first platoon being sent out, Tsume had resigned herself to dying. At least she would have a great ass to look at before she dies, she thinks. 

Then Sakumo steps onto the battleground and the tide changes. 

Savage, relentless and seemingly untiring. Tsume can feel his desolate rage all the way back in the trenches where she sat there waiting for her chakra pill to kick in. Tsume remembers her baba’s words, the final conclusion to the terrifying stories, ‘ _spent and nothing left to protect, the Hatake used their last bit of strength to wipe out their enemies, knowing that they would die too.’_

Then Tsume stands, rushing forward to join the fight. She isn't going to stand around and watch a sister clan burn themselves out in rage. 

She watches Sakumo register her. He’s not too far in that he thinks she'd an enemy. Not too late, she thinks. She still can save him. 

Kuromaru and her guard his back through the waves of enemies. 

✥ ✥ ✥

Sakumo leaves for the frontlines in spite of his students begging him not to. There are people out there, people who have people to come back to. Sakumo doesn’t have any. All he has is scorched land and a pile of  rubble. A faded photo of Tsukimi, a fantasy of how their children might have looked. 

He fights relentlessly and a lack of interest of keeping himself alive. This makes the enemies fear him even more because even when he’s bleeding out, Sakumo keeps on rising like a dead man crawling from his grave. They don’t realise the irony of their words.

Konoha calls him the White Fang, Kumo calls him the Ghost. 

He calls himself dead man walking. 

He returns to Konoha broken and battered, wondering why hundreds and thousands of shinobis die and he’s still alive. For his hero status, his war efforts, Sakumo is handed the fourth Hokage reign. 

With this, Sakumo realises he’s not going to be allowed to give up for a long time. There is nothing more honourable than serving the village, Tsukimi would have wanted him to accept it. 

He accepts it. 

✥ ✥ ✥

All Four has ever known is the Cage and Orochimaru. 

All Four knows is pain and hunger.

Orochimaru stares down with sharp eyes, his medical chakra stitching the wounds up his chest.

Four screams and screams. He wishes some days that he wouldn’t wake up like the others hadn’t, wishes that he fails the experiments so Orochimaru would stop feeding him. 

Four survives all experiments. 

“Blame the parents that abandoned you,” Orochimaru tells him. “Your parents abandoned you when you were just born.”

Four hates and hates until he meets Sixty-eight. Only Sixty-eight has survived the longest aside from him. 

✥ ✥ ✥

Four is ten when Orochimaru really looked at him. He had just come from a meeting with the Yondaime and realises the uncanny resemblance of Hatake Sakumo and Four - the silvery flyaway hair that can only be tempered by a shinobi-grade hair tie, the curve of the eyes.

Danzo had said that Four was an abandoned baby. If this is really Sakumo’s child, there would be no chance of Four being abandoned. Orochimaru turns around slowly in his lab, a sudden, paralyzing awareness dawned on him. 

He had known Sakumo since they were children, Danzo had said that Sakumo had ordered his experiments to continue and there was no way Sakumo would have allowed that. Had these experiments orders even come from Sensei?

Had everything been a lie?

Orochimaru had known how the villagers had looked at him. His appearance have frequently scared even fellow shinobis away. If it came down between Danzo and his words, Orochimaru knew they wouldn’t have looked second at him. 

Four is Sakumo’s child, the son that Sakumo had mourned for.

Danzo knew this.

Orochimaru falls heavily into his chair, unable to take his eyes off Four. Palming his eyes, he laughs a mirthless, hysterical laugh.

He should have known! Sensei would have never allowed this, Orochimaru didn’t even want to do this until Danzo had told him, ordered, _threatened_ on the Hokage’s order. There is no proof of Orochimaru’s unwillingness, no proof of Danzo’s orders.

He is fucked.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's so hard writing sad angsty stuff when you're in a good mood. XD;


	3. Chapter 3

After Sixty-eight’s bad reaction to the food caused him to make wood explode from his cage, Orochimaru had changed all his experiments to Sixty-eight. Four is somewhat happy and unhappy at this. He can’t decide.

Then all the experiments stop after Orochimaru looks at him. 

Four doesn’t understand what that looks mean but that intensity can only mean bad things for him.

✥ ✥ ✥

Sakumo can feel the blood in his mouth when he wakes. 

Another night, yet another nightmare. He’s not even sure if he could classify his last dream a nightmare when all it had was the empty room surrounding him.

Hiruzen tells him that Konoha is his child now, that the people are his family now. Sakumo repeats his words every day in the mirror but the emptiness stays. 

He sees the baby his ex-students bring in and feel bitter. It's not healthy, he doesn't need his Yamanaka student to tell him that. 

"Sensei?" Inoichi approaches him. 

Sakumo had been hiding in the back, watching the people mill around the Uchiha's hall. Ten years later and he's brooding over it. Some teacher he is. Hadn't he told his own students to learn to let go? It would be easier, if only his Hatake pack instincts aren't trying to reach out to something. 

He looks out the window, into the darkened forest. 

"Sensei?" Inoichi touches his elbow, having not gotten a response from his first greeting. "Have you been spending too much time in the office again?" 

A smile briefly crosses his lips, sardonic and deprecating. "Didn't you know? Hokages live in their offices," he says. 

"Perhaps we should permanently assign Minato as your secretary?" Inoichi hands him a plate full of food and a pair of chopsticks. "He's a paperwork savant. At least he had gotten you out of the office before eight."

"Or maybe Minato and a proper secretary," Kushina adds, sandwiching him between Inoichi and prods him into taking a bite. "Minato can focus on cataloguing all your paper into the levels of urgency and a proper secretary will keep track of your schedule. Or make it a rotation. Shikaku—" 

"Shikaku is getting promoted to Chuunin Leader," Sakumo says. He takes a bite of the karaage at Kushina's further prodding. Mikoto’s food that had always tasted good only tastes like sand in his mouth.

"Mikoto would love to be one of the people on rotation. Especially since now she's village bound after her first child."

They watch Mikoto accept congratulations to her child's first month, gracefully bowing out of conversations as she makes her way to them. 

Sakumo grudgingly eats some grilled fish when Inoichi touches his elbow again and sighs, "where have my cute little students gone to? All so bossy now." 

Kushina harrumphs. 

"If you didn't keep skipping meals and turn up at Itachi's one month celebration looking like a stick, we wouldn't have to harangue you into eating, Sensei," Mikoto says and smiles. Even with the pregnancy weight still all there and a baby in her arms, Mikoto’s smiles are effortlessly scary. 

"I don't look like a stick, I'm just—" 

Orochimaru steps in front of them, and it's through the decades of knowing him that Sakumo recognises the edge of fear and anxiety beneath his cool facade. "Sakumo, if it is convenient, I would like to speak to you…" 

"No politicking today," Mikoto starts but Sakumo waves her away, handing the barely touched plate of food into Kushina's hands. 

"Is there a room we can borrow?" 

Picking up on the change of tone, Mikoto nods and leads them across the banquet hall with all the stealth Sakumo had beaten into them during their career. Behind them, the sound of the party echoes in the silence of the hallways. No one except Fugaku notices them leaving. 

Mikoto lights some of the hallway lights and slides open to a traditional tatami room. Lighting the lamps, she tilts her head to him, a hand on his shoulder. "Would you like us to stay?" 

Orochimaru shifts uneasily on his zabuton. 

Something is making Orochimaru scared and that's worrying. 

"Inoichi and Kushina, please stay. Mikoto—" 

"My disappearance would be noticeable." She smiles. "Don't worry I'll divert anyone looking for you."

Shs bows and slides the close behind her. Kushina leans over, slapping a privacy seal between them and the hum of the party trickles down to nothing. 

Orochimaru slumps his shoulders. He clasps his hands, nails digging into his flesh. “You have to believe me. I did not know—” His shoulders shake and Sakumo can hear the rasp of his breath. 

“Start from the beginning,” Sakumo says gently. He reaches out to place a hand on Orochimaru but Orochimaru flinches away. 

“I… I do not have proof. I—” Orochimaru swivels his head to Inoichi. “You… you are a mindwalker, you can—”

“Orochimaru, we don’t mindwalk allies. You know how our laws work.”

“Yes… … _allies,_ ” Orochimaru mutters to himself. “Okay. From the beginning… It was the end of the second shinobi war when Danzo approached me. He informed me that the Hokage had approved and assigned me to experiment genetic splitching on our prisoners. The mission scroll was ranked S and based on protocol, I set it on fire after reading. They were adults, none succeeded. And then Danzo gave me a new mission scroll, another S rank. This time approving testing on children and infants.”

_“What?_ ”

“I could not believe that Sandaime could have approved such a thing, so I had questioned him discreetly and he confirmed. I could not refuse and I was assured that the children and infants were either abandoned, orphans from another country but— ” Orochimaru hunches, head dipping lower. Sakumo could pick up the trace of blood and salt. “When you took the hat, I was informed that you approved the continuation of… of…”

Sakumo surges up, his chakra spiking in rage.“How dare you! How did you not check with me?!” 

Orochimaru throws himself forward, pressing his head on the ground. “I… Please mindwalk me. I have said nothing but the truth, I swear! Danzo threatened when I refused to continue. There was no scroll left, Sensei would not have taken the fall for it if I tried to tell people, if people were told about this. The child. Your child— ” 

A roaring sound filled his ears, suffocating his senses.

_Your child._

_Your._

_“What do you think of the name Kakashi from our son?”_

Sakumo turns slowly to Inoichi, mouth opening and closing, unable to find the air to speak. His pack instincts had been continuously reaching out to something. Hatakes are bound by blood, making it almost virtually impossible to even contemplate betrayal. 

His blood had known.

“What about Sensei’s child?” Inoichi asks, taking the role of interrogator. Kushina slips her hand into Sakumo’s, pushing him onto the zabuton.

Orochimaru doesn’t raise his head. “I believe one of the presumed abandoned infants is his child. I have reason to believe that… the entire mission had not been sanctioned… in any form. I… was set up… I. I am willing to face judgement. I... ”

“Why didn’t you ask?” Sakumo asks hoarsely.

“I did!” Orochimaru slams a fist on the tatami. “I asked you if you were sure about this S rank mission you were assigning me and you said yes!”

“The only S rank mission I signed off for you was… It was a continuation of the surveillance on Kumo.”  Sakumo takes a deep breath. Konoha needed Yondaime now, not the shattered mess Hatake Sakumo. “Inoichi, go and get Shikato here now. Orochimaru, did anyone know you were here?”

“You _believe_ me?”

“Should I have not?” Sakumo asks flatly. He’s not ready to face the fact that his son had been experimented on. He doesn’t want to know yet. He knows he’ll break. 

Perhaps that’s Danzo’s aim all along, he thinks.

“I…”

Sakumo turns away, unable to look at Orochimaru, someone he had called friend since he was six. After all this is settled and all is ashes, Sakumo doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to trust him again.

But Orochimaru had offered to be mindwalked and Danzo had been trying to discredit him long before he had received the hat. 

“I currently have a solid alibi at the Yukimura restaurant,” Orochimaru says.

✥ ✥ ✥

Shikato made the plans simple. No plan survives the first contact with the enemy, Shikato likes to say. Sakumo couldn’t help but agree with him. 

He slashes through a Root shinobi, barely even using chakra to cleave a path through the hallway.

What a waste of life, Sakumo thinks. If only there is a way that he could spare their lives and execute Danzo. 

Shikato’s shadows dances around him, spearing the shinobis rapidly as they surge towards the traitor. 

The wall on his left gives way to Tsunade’s fists, a doton wall thrown up on his right by Kushina to block a water wave. Sakumo dodges a fist, his blade slicing through the man. He doesn’t bother checking if he’s dead, Shikato is right behind him watching his back. 

Danzo raises his arm, fingers flying through seals fast. 

Not fast enough though, lightning seemingly spirals around Sakumo; he’s not even moving to slice people anymore. He holds his blade out, channelling lightning and white chakra into it. His blade is a fury of thunder and lightning snapping even above the din of battle. 

Danzo’s right arm caves like melted butter.

Sakumo kicks him into a wall. Danzo’s ribs crack under his feet and Sakumo stands above, shoulders heaving, breath ragged.

He could have brought his son up. Could have watched him take his first steps, could have heard him say his first words, could have, could have.

All that taken away from him because a man, a _traitor,_ had stolen Kakashi from him. Death is too easy for him. Sakumo wants him to pay, wants him to hurt the way Kakashi had. 

He can’t. Shimura Danzo is too volatile a man to keep and impossible to leash. It’s a risk that the Yondaime cannot take. 

“Danzo! On all accounts of treason, I sentence you to execution!” 

He stabs through, making his execution the most painful possible and leaves the traitor grappling for his last breath, choking on blood filled lungs.

✥ ✥ ✥

A man with white hair comes to Four and Sixty-eight.

“Did you give them a name?” the man asks Orochimaru.

“I— No.”

The man with white hair opens his cage and holds Four. Four hadn’t known it was possible to be touched and not hurt. 

“You’re Kakashi, your name is Kakashi,” the man whispers. His large hand caresses Four’s face. Four shakes, wishing and hoping that this painless touch would continue. “You’re my son.”

Son. That means that parent, right? This man is the parent that abandoned him. The reason why he hurts all the time.

Four pushes away, tongue rigid and unyielding, but Four pushes through. Hatred burns in his chest. “I… _ha-e-te_ … you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yup. This is the end of the short fic. There won't be anymore chps or anything for this. How you want it to go after this would be up to you. Whether Sakumo reconciles or not with Kakashi, whether 68 (Tenzo) stays with Kakashi or not.
> 
> Truth to be told, there was supposed to be a bigger part for Kakashi in this fic. But I realised if I gave Kakashi a bigger part, it'd also mean I'd likely have to write an actual torture/experimentation scene which I'm not keen to. So he got mostly axed out. Sakumo deserves some spotlight anyway and I ran out of fuel for this. Hence why the last chp is lackluster.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](http://orlha.tumblr.com) if you like  
> Or [on discord](https://discord.gg/h67U4q7)


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